How to Manage Multiple Inboxes

People often look at me like I’m nuts when I tell them I have 10 inboxes I manage. It might seem overwhelming to manage multiple inboxes but with a few strategies in place, it’s a breeze and I spend minutes in my inboxes instead of hours. Now, I’m sharing those strategies with you.

🔑 Key #1: Each inbox has a purpose

Did you know you can have more than one inbox? I have an inbox that is solely for online shopping and those pop-ups that offer you 10% off if you enter your email address. I don’t need promotional emails going to the same inbox as emails from my kid’s school.

My personal email address is closely guarded and only shared with real people like my doctor’s and dentist’s offices, my kid’s school, and family. One of my inboxes is specifically for signing up for things like online courses or membership. Another is for client communication.

When each inbox has a designated purpose you know exactly which email address to use when signing up for things, and which inbox to search for a specific email you want to reference.

🔑 Key #2: make it easy to view your inboxes

Five of my 6 Gmails all flood into the Gmail app on my phone. That means I can check 5 inboxes at a glance instead of having to login in to each one individually.

I love the Gmail app because you can easily toggle which accounts show in the inbox. As a teacher, I’d toggle off my school account so it wasn’t on my phone on the weekends and holidays. 

For the two client inboxes I manage, I have set hours to manage them. For Client “A” I log in each morning and sort her emails into separate inbox sections making it faster for her to assess and answer her emails.

For Client “C”, I manage her support inbox (as well as helping manage her online membership) so I check emails once a day and respond to them.

Making inboxes easy to access and having boundaries around when I access them helps create systems and structure so I’m not living in the inboxes.

🔑 Key #3: BE Ruthless

Delete and unsubscribe with zero fear or guilt. Less stuff in your inbox means less stuff you have to manage. Most people are simply getting too many emails. 

Here’s a quick rule to help you decide if it’s time to unsubscribe:if you haven’t opened the last 5 emails from the sender, you should unsubscribe. Remember, you can always resubscribe to something.

If you’re too afraid to delete something, at least move it out of your inbox by archiving it or moving it to a designated folder.

🔑 Key #4:You’ll know what’s coming

Because I’m so ruthless with what I allow in my inboxes, I know the email schedule of most things that show up. I know each morning I’ll have an email from a service that suggests books as well as two from memberships I’m in.

I know one of my favorite lists always emails on Thursday evenings and another on Sunday afternoons.

When something unexpected shows up in my inbox it’s usually spam that slipped through, an unexpected collaboration or speaking invitation, or a promotional email.

🔑 Key #5: reset seasonally

I make sure to clean out my email folders seasonally.

That means at the start of every new school year, I’m clearing out emails from my kid’s school from the previous year.

In January I look at my “Save Just In Case” and “Online Payment Receipts” folder to clear out things that are more than a year old. If it’s been a year and I still haven’t needed those things, I probably no longer need them.

If you’ve never done this, reverse sort your emails by date so you see the oldest emails. Emails that are several years old are usually easy to delete.

In need of a massive declutter? Check out this post all about how to clean out a Gmail inbox.

🔑 Key #6: don’t let things stay in your email

Repeat after me, “The inbox is not a forever home”. If someone forwards me a file, I know my email is not the home for that. It should be saved in my Google Drive or Dropbox. As soon as I’m able, I download the file, store it in its “forever home”, then file or delete the email.

You should never be digging through your email to find a file. Get in the habit of downloading and saving things to their forever home. If that feels daunting, time yourself doing it. You’ll realize that it really doesn’t take long and your brain will stop feeling so resistant to it.

There you have it! Six simple keys to managing multiple inboxes without it being overwhelming!